


Dragon's Due

by MrProphet



Category: Dracula - Bram Stoker
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 16:50:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10701105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet





	Dragon's Due

They draw lots every month, on the night of the full moon. The town elders have always said that the names of every maiden in the town went into the box, and if some of the peasants notice that the daughters of the elders and the merchants and guildsmen are never chosen, they say nothing. We know too well that in other towns and villages, where the old ways are not held to, they lock their doors and fasten their shutters at night and still their children are taken. Still infants vanish from their cribs, mothers are slain at their suckle, and sometimes the Dragon will even ravish whole farmsteads, killing and devouring every living thing within. What is one maiden a month when compared with such slaughter? Nothing at all, save to the maiden and her loved ones.

Once a month, at the full moon, they draw the lots, and the maidens of the town married young.

Once a month, at the full moon, they draw the lots, and at the next new moon, the chosen maiden is offered to the Dragon.

One month, at the full moon, my lot was drawn, and although my father raged and my mother flung me at any man who came close, at the new moon I was brought to the town square and chained to the post for the Dragon to consume. The priest came forward and blessed me, hearing my confession and reading the last rites to shrive my soul before death. I was keenly aware of how few sins she had to confess. I was only fourteen and believed more in God than in the Dragon.

“You are a good and righteous girl, Reveka,” the priest commended me. “Your death is life for your family and your people.”

“Yes, Father Simion,” I whispered. “I understand.”

As the sun sank low in the sky, the town square emptied, until at last my family departed in indecent haste, fleeing from the sunset as though it brought the devil himself. The church bells rang out for six and I knew that the chimes were my death knell. As the last echo of the bells faded, I head the sharper ring of iron-shod hooves upon the cobblestones of the main street.

Into the square strode a great, black destrier, and mounted upon the horse was the Dragon. He dismounted and strode towards me, his great, black cloak flapping in the wind. He was a tall man with a straight back. His hair was iron grey and his full mouth was framed by a long, drooping moustache. His eyes were dark and burned with unholy light above a proud, aquiline nose. To see him was to understand what terror was.

He strode towards me and those eyes seemed to bore into my very soul. I felt darkness swirl around me and thought that death was upon me.

And yet I woke and saw him standing over me. My wrists were still shackled to the post and my life, it seemed, was not at an end.

“You know me,” he said in a voice like ice. His breath washed over me, foul and choking.

“I know, My Lord,” I gasped.

“You know why I am here?”

“I know, My Lord.”

He placed his hands upon the post, one to either side of my head. “You have courage,” he told me, “as well as beauty and” – he sniffed at my skin – “freshness. This offering is pleasing to me.”

I shivered at his closeness, but as yet he did not touch me.

“Would you have another here in your place?” he asked.

“Yes,” I confessed.

“Name them.” His voice was little more than a whisper.

“My Lord?”

“Only name another and I shall take them in your place,” the Dragon said. “Only name them.”

Of course I began to think of names at once; my sister, the boys who teased me, the girls who had mocked me, the elders who chose me.

“Quickly now,” he coaxed. “Choose.”

I looked up at him and shook my head. “No,” I said at last. “No. I won’t.”

The Dragon stood back from me and drew the sword from his hip. I closed my eyes, but still heard the blade whip through the air and felt it bite into my cheek.

“You are a pure spirit,” he said, “and beyond my power. Should anyone touch you, they answer to me. Should you stray from the light by the slightest step, I shall take you.”

The hooves of his horse rang upon the cobbles and faded away. When I opened my eyes there was no sign of his ever having ben there, save the cut on my cheek and the blood which dripped onto the stone below.

In the morning they found me still at the post. They cut me down and took me home, but everyone feared that my survival would bring disaster on the town. If they stayed their hands from killing me, it was only because they all knew what the mark on my cheek, that sinuous, serpentine scar, meant. My life was claimed: his to take and his alone, and to the Devil with any man who challenged that claim.

The whispered about me, saying that I had stayed the Devil’s hand by witchery, or by offering my soul to Satan. Others swore that I had given my body to the Dragon on the high altar in the church, or that my mother had promised him an unborn child for my life. None of them cared for the truth and so I never told it.

In all honesty, I could not have told them why he spared my life. I do not for a moment believe that he who has taken babes in arms to sate his appetite spared me for my purity. Since that night I have thought of many answers – that he toyed with me, waiting for me to fall; that he preferred for the townsfolk to send their daughters unwillingly to death; that he wanted them to feel such fear and suspicion as they did – but never knew for certain. His age and his power made him a thing unfathomable to my kind, as I understood far better than any of the elders.

I never knew his reasons, but I never doubted his sincerity. Just as my neighbours stayed their hands, so I minded my behaviour and kept myself free from sin. In time, however, as I grew older and – so I was told – more beautiful, and as others went to the post and were not spared, I saw that both the resentment and the temptation would soon be too strong.

So it was that I left my little town and travelled south, and joined a group of sisters travelling from their house in the north to the Hospital of St Joseph and Ste Mary in Buda-Pesth. It was at the Hospital that I saw my path clearly at last and took vows as a sister of the order.

It has been ten years since I took my orders, and fifteen since I was offered to the Dragon. In that time I have come to see that I have not been perfectly virtuous; I have lapsed. I have coveted and my thoughts have sometimes been impure. This being so, I have wondered if perhaps the Dragon’s threat was mere bluster, or if his sight could be less than all-pervasive. Certainly, all I have learned at the hospital tells me that only the Lord knows and sees all.

And now this stranger comes to our Hospital, claiming to have flown from the Dragon’s grasp, and lo; no Dragon appears to wrestle him back. He bears the Dragon’s mark on his skin – oh, he calls it a shaving cut and tells a pretty story, but I see the truth in it an know that the Dragon has marked him his own – and yet he walked free, although it near cost him life and soul to do so.

It is because of the stranger that I must ask myself: is the shadow which I have lived under for so many years a mere phantasm? Well, tonight I shall know.

I do not doubt the stranger when he speaks of his love for his fiancée in England, yet I know from his account that he is a man and I see the fire in his eyes when he looks at me. Tonight I shall commit a mortal sin, and a violation of my vows and of the sanctity of this holy place. Should there be any strength in the Dragon’s curse then my life truly shall be forfeit. I leave this account of myself in the care of Sister Concepcion, to be borne with her back to our motherhouse. I have asked that it be kept safe until I die, and should that death come hard upon this night, let all recognise the power of the Dragon, and let Miss Mina Murray guard her fiancé well, for he as I is marked as the prey of Dracula.

Sister Agatha of the Hospital of St Joseph and Ste Mary, Buda-Pesth,  
11th August.


End file.
